


a fall into silence

by slackeuse



Category: Produce 101 (TV), Wanna One (Band)
Genre: Dark but not Problematic lol, Lots of Music, M/M, a bit of magical realism, angst bc it's me, chaebol daniel who's a little broken and just really needs someone to love him, fastburn hell yes, futuristic seoul, jihoon has projective empathy but man he's broken too sorry, some gang relations so tw for drugs and guns, virtuoso jihoon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 03:35:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14252181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slackeuse/pseuds/slackeuse
Summary: When Jihoon catches the attention of Daniel—who's handsome, rich, and has everything Jihoon could ever want—he doesn't quite imagine he'd let himself fall so hard and so fast because he knows fucking well the consequences of loving someone like him.





	a fall into silence

two people who were once very close can  
without blame  
or grand betrayal  
become strangers  
perhaps this is the saddest thing in the world.  
\- warsan shire

 

 

Jihoon plays Telemann’s Fantasias for money on his grandmother’s violin with memories on his fingertips in a dirty alley, three steps away from the busiest street in Seoul. Those first notes vibrate in exhaust smoke, teasing and lilting. They’re a spell tempting tourists to linger and listen to his chords and double stops, to his bass note deep and heady and its answer in a delicate, airy voice repeating, repeating, growing louder and assertive.

This song reminds him of when his mother still smiled, still giggled, still hugged him, still kissed him, reminds him of when he followed her quick-footed dancing around their apartment as she played this fantasia. He remembers being happy back then, and it’s a feeling he weaves into each note so that it’s his audience who dances now, as though caught in a trance of the nostalgia hiding in the attention-demanding trills.

He jumps from a brief silence into the second movement in vivid, allegro intricacies and polyphonic conversation. He glances at his mesmerized audience between the third and fifths that fall into his hand and the sixteenths that slur under his bow. They sway with eyes closed as he starts the last, short movement with rhythmic vitality.

_Fucking perfect._

When he finishes, all he can do is release a content sigh. Applause and laughter bring him back to the grimy alley, and in a heartbeat, he’s smiling with the tourists, shaking their hands, giving out hugs, eyeing the cash fluttering into his open violin case.

“Thank you,” he says again and again and doesn’t mean it even once.

It takes about five minutes for the tourists he’d entranced to start losing themselves into the crowded sidewalk again, but there’s a man who’s cutting through them to approach him, hand outstretched. He’s stupid handsome, but it’s not like Jihoon gives a fuck. Rather, he eyes the gold glittering just below the man’s suit cuff, a dangerous flash of rich.

“That was incredible,” the man says. Clearly this man knows nothing of dark alleyways and the boys who lurk in their shadows, what it means for someone handsome like him to meet someone like Jihoon in a place like this. “You’re an incredible player. Like no one I’ve ever heard before.”

“Oh, really?” Jihoon says, tone contained to casual nonchalance. If Seongwoo was here, he would’ve told him to steal this man’s watch with a slick grin on his pretty face. He’d want him to con the man with a sweet ass smile, convince him with a suggestive smirk to ask him to spend the night with him so he could rob him naked. “Thanks, I guess.”

But Seongwoo isn’t here, so he ignores the man’s hand and the man’s watch and the fact that he could fucking rob him blind and bring home even more money, crouches to collect the tourists's considerable donations into his pockets to punctuate the dismissal.

The man just chuckles and withdraws his hand, and it draws Jihoon’s attention back to him just in time to catch the man reaching inside his suit jacket. Fuck no. Jihoon goes for the knife he keeps tucked into his belt against his back, ready to press the sharpened edge to this man’s Adam’s apple if he dares pull a fucking gun on him. Not today. Not fucking ever.

“Hwang Minhyun,” the man introduces himself. There’s no gun. It’s an off-white, gold-lettered card. He tosses it into Jihoon’s violin case. “I’m the conductor for the Seoul Symphony Orchestra. We’re having closed auditions in two months, and I think you’d have a shot if you’re interested. Call me.”

There’s an unspoken _or not_ at the end, and it makes Jihoon clench his jaw.

Minhyun disappears into the crowd without looking back at him, but he’d just handed Jihoon the dream he’d left beside his mother’s dead body eight years ago.

 

 

In Hongdae, Jihoon steals an expensive pair of jeans and an equally expensive white t-shirt because he deserves it. He changes into it on his way to his favorite music store to the sound of a drug deal in a subway restroom, propaganda plastered to the cracking walls under bright graffiti. The pants are probably too tight, but it works in his favor.

He catches the attention of one of the sales reps when he walks through the steel door of the old store. He makes her introduce herself before he gives his own name. Newly eighteen—she is five years younger than him. She knows a little guitar, could play something for him if he wanted.

“Let me show you around,” the girl says, then begins leading him around store, lit in Technicolor, with a gentle tug of her fingertips on his elbow, laugh-lines and smiles and fast-talking femininity.

“Sure,” he acquiesces easily because it’s perfectly cool inside, smells of resin, wood, metal, and polish. The floors and ceilings are a narration of ripped posters and cracked vinyls. The instruments live in locked glass cases. The sales rep’s thumbprint opens them.

She shows him the trombones, the trumpets, the flutes, the guitars, the basses, the cellos, the violas, the violins. Jihoon runs his fingertips across their slick finishes. The sales rep doesn’t seem to care as long as his touch doesn’t leave her. Then she brings him to the polished black piano in the back.

He’s never seen something so beautiful.

“May I?” Jihoon asks.

“Of course. Sit, sit.” When he does, she places her hands on his shoulders. “Here, I can teach you how to play something. Für Elise?” She reaches over him, left hand tapping out slow, irritating arpeggios.

“I think,” he starts, brushes her fingers away because he can’t stop himself, “it goes something like this?” Of course he fucking knows how it goes, but it’s easier in situations like this to pretend he doesn’t.

His eyes close to the touch of those cold keys. Alternating between A minor and E major, he plays the broken chord quietly first and then allows the piano’s full sound to fill the store, fill his chest, fill his soul, and wishes this piano could be his. Maybe someday. He stops before entering the second movement.

“Or who fucking knows,” Jihoon says with a charming smile, something to distract her from the fact that he clearly does know.

It works because she nods enthusiastically. “Whatever you played,” she says, “it sounded good to me.”

“Thank you.” He chuckles, and he’s not surprised that she blushes. At this rate, he might end up getting the sheet music for free. The tight pants were a good idea after all. “Actually, I came here for some sheet music?”

Before she can answer, though, a man interrupts her, “Over here.” He’s tall, thin-waisted, broad-shouldered. He runs a hand through perfectly tousled black hair. A diamond-encrusted watch shimmies down his tattooed forearm in the mutterings of silver. “I’ll buy some for you if you’ll let me see you again. Name’s Daniel.”

He wants to sneer, but he doesn’t. “You want to buy _me_ ,” Jihoon corrects. Because that’s how things like this work. He’s familiar with these kinds of transactions. With the people who try to make them with him.

Daniel smirks, the quirk in the corner of his lips the same sharp angle as his jaw. “If that’s the only way you’ll have me. Tell me your name.”

“Sorry.” Jihoon even offers a smile as fake as his apology. “I’m not for sale.”

“All right, then.” Daniel doesn’t seem phased, though. He tosses a leather jacket over his shoulder in a way that whispers _perhaps not yet_ because he’s exactly the type of person who thinks money can buy anything, even people. He’s the type of person who ruined this city and plays every sleight of hand to keep it that way. His jeans, precisely tattered, doesn’t hide that. His black combat boots, shined leather, doesn’t hide that. He has money. He has power. He has freedom.

Or at least he thinks he does.

“My cousin’s having a block party for his birthday next Tuesday, though,” Jihoon says. Daniel’s steady, dark gaze follows him as he crosses the small store and finds the piece he’ll play for Minhyun’s audition. Except it’s behind glass like almost everything else here. Jihoon turns to the sales rep. “Can you check the price for Bach’s Chaconne from Partita No. 2 in D minor?”

“Yes.” She nearly jumps into action. “O-of course.”

While the sales rep opens the case and retrieves the fresh-paged score to check for the price inside the cover, Jihoon plucks a pen from its perch behind her ear and writes his name and address along the edges of Daniel’s tattoo.

Because someone rich like Daniel wouldn’t dare step foot into the slums. Because he’s no freer than Jihoon is. And Jihoon wants to fucking rub that in his face.

“Starts at ten.”

Daniel studies Jihoon’s shit penmanship for a few long moments. Then he pulls out his wallet, hands the sales rep more money than the sheet music costs. “That sounds like a date. You want me to court you? Well, prepare yourself to fall in love, Jihoon.”

“Thanks,” Jihoon says. Doesn’t mean it. “I’ll do my best.”

Really, he should be the one warning Daniel, but what fun would that be.

 

 

With wallets full of money from picking pockets in pristine Yeouido, Jihoon and Seongwoo return home to the smell of tteokbokki on the stove. The door slams shut behind them.

“Mom,” Seongwoo says, arms open for a hug as he crosses the cramped kitchen to her arms. She gives him a kiss on the forehead from her tiptoes as he reaches around her to pluck a bit of kimchi from a bowl on the pink laminate countertop and hide it behind his back.

“Happy birthday, my son,” she says. She is wiping her hands on her rose-printed dress so she can give him a proper hug. “You should head down. Everything’s all set up for you. I’m going to finish this, and then I’ll head down, too, okay?”

He chuckles and returns her forehead kiss from within her embrace. “Okay, if you say so.” Then he stuffs the kimchi into his mouth and dances away from his mother when she chides him with an affectionate smile. Then her eyes fall on Jihoon, her smile softens just for him, and it clenches his chest a little.

She reminds him of his mom so much.

As she reaches out to give him a hug, too, Seongwoo gives Jihoon’s head a little shove. “Come on, Jihoon. Party can’t start without me.” He doesn’t check to see if he’s following.

His aunt’s arms wrap around him before he can. Her hair smells like the gochujang. She’s probably been cooking all day for her only son’s precious birthday. Her embrace is warm, though, and full of love. “Did you two have a good day? No trouble?”

“Yeah,” Jihoon says as she sets her hands on his shoulders to look at him squarely. She doesn’t know what they do, thinks that they have honest jobs that just don’t pay well. It’s better that she doesn’t know the truth—both that they’re petty thieves and that jobs like that don’t exist for people like them who live in places like this where shanty houses blanket the hillsides in hundreds, in thousands, with sun-faded roofs, bed sheets instead of doors, appliances twenty years old, five people to a room. He kisses her cheeks. “No trouble at all. You really need to stop worrying so much.”

“How can I not?”

He doesn’t answer her because there’s nothing to say. “Did you talk to the bride today?”

“Yes, yes. Thanks for reminding me, dear.” She turns back to the tteokbokki. “She said she’s happy to go with whatever you want to play. We finalized the sketch for her dress, too. She wants a really long train, but I don’t have enough fabric…”

“Really? I can play anything?” Jihoon reaches for his wallet and pulls out several thousand dollars, hopefully more than enough to cover whatever his aunt needs. Even if it leaves him with barely anything, it’s not like he needs a lot when he can steal most of what he wants or convince someone to get it for him anyway. “Is this enough?”

This is the least he can do for his aunt.

“Yes, anything at all. And this is more than enough. Here, have some food. Just make sure to eat it all before you get to the party or Seongwoo will be jealous.”

With a handful of deep-fried mandu, Jihoon leaves with his mind twisting around piano symphonies and violin concertos. Novelleten, Asturias, and Danzas fantásticas. La stravaganza, Zigeunerweisen, and Sérénade mélancholique. He can feel the imagined weight of his grandmother’s violin resting on his shoulder. His fingertips poised a breath away from steel-core strings, he plays in his mind for the summer night’s smog-hazy stars. The big sound of the open string pours through him, dips into his soul, until his ribcage vibrates with the party’s intoxicated synthetic rhythm and sweat-slick bodies dance around him.

He finds Seongwoo somewhere in the middle of his party, plastic cup in one hand and some girl’s ass in another. When he spots Jihoon, he yells over the music to one of his gang friends to give Jihoon a drink and show him a good time.

“Have some fucking fun for once,” he says, more a command than a suggestion.

So he drinks and he dances and he ignores his mother’s voice in the back of his mind to be careful, to be watchful, to be untrusting. His father hadn’t fucking been any of those things when he’d gone into drug debt with the same gang his cousin boasts membership. His mother hadn’t been any of those fucking things, either, when she’d let in his father’s friend that night. That man had been desperate to prove himself, and he’d shot Jihoon’s parents in front of him, then apologized after as if that’d absolve him of his sin.

A tattooed forearm catches his eye. Daniel had taken his dare.

He’s wearing a loose tank-top, has a drink in each hand, and a cigarette between his lips—same diamond watch, same diamond earrings. Black-inked rose illustrations climb from his wrist to his shoulder. It’s beautiful and nothing like the tattoos Seongwoo has, nothing like the tattoos his gang friends have. He’s lightened his hair, dark roots brightening into autumn gold.

The girl he’s dancing with slips a tiny, sealed polybag into the band of his boxers, and he chuckles and kisses her. Because of course Daniel does exactly what he wants, precisely when and how he wants, cocaine tucked against his skin. Maybe it isn’t for him. Doesn’t fucking matter. Consequences simply don’t exist for people like him.

Jihoon doesn’t know how long his eyes follow the reign of Daniel’s hips, the sweat glistening in the dip between his collarbones. He slips between drunken swagger until his hand meets with Daniel’s waist in one split-second neon electricity, one split-second mystic fever, and then Daniel wraps an arm around his shoulders. Together, they sway and rock to seductive synth, teasing beats, drum riffs weaving between steady bass notes.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Jihoon says into Daniel’s ear. The slums are dangerous for him—beautiful, careless, glittering in diamonds and silver. People like Daniel are targeted, kidnapped, raped, ransomed, and then killed by people like Jihoon, like Seongwoo and his friends, like his uncle and his gang. That’s the price the wealthy pay for flaunting their opulence to the poor, the starving.

“I wanted to see you,” Daniel says, pressing their cheeks together. And fuck if it isn’t soft. Fuck if it isn’t distracting Jihoon from the fact that only someone looking for danger would try finding a boy this deep in the slums. “I want you.”

Jihoon wants to close his eyes and tumble into Daniel’s warm, liquor-tinted darkness lit by a half-moon. He lifts Daniel’s hand and kisses the inside of his wrist, right next to his watch’s wristband. His heartbeat patters against Jihoon’s lips.

“Is there someone waiting for you at home?” Jihoon asks, lifting his eyes to meet Daniel’s. There’s something about the way Daniel watches him that lights his skin on fire. “Do you want to come home with me?”

He should say no. He’d be suicidal to say yes.

Teeth between Jihoon’s earlobe, Daniel nods. They stumble through the crowd, entangled in one another. Jihoon lets him in and Daniel captures his lips with his own, maneuvers him to the hard mattress in the corner where he sleeps beside Seongwoo’s bed and teaches him how to be with another man, how to use his mouth and his hands, teaches him how fingers feel, how lips feel, how tongue feels. Daniel moves almost too much too fast, but he slows down as if he knows which gasps are from fear and which are from pleasure and kisses him as if it’s a form of worship.

When they’re sweating and satisfied, Jihoon leafs through his annotations for Bach’s towering masterpiece as Daniel draws patterns on his shoulder blade with a fingernail. The violin’s fifteen-minute grieving song fills his mind—the romantic and gentle harmonic structure, the rich and deep repeated bass line, the passionate and clear double stops, the graceful and dynamic displaced slurs, the flowing and lilting chords.

Chaconne is bright but brooding, both deeply moving and almost greedy in its technical difficulty. The story is that Bach had written the partita after his wife’s death, and that’s the despair he hears within its depths. Although his mother had always complained it took her three years to master, it’d been one of her favorite pieces to play because his grandmother had played it with the National Philharmonic Orchestra of South Korea in the Seoul Arts Center some sixty years ago. He’s seen the video of the performance a hundred million billion times, watched under a veil of nostalgia his great grandmother’s expressive face and red lips and quick fingers and graceful arm brushing the bow along the strings of her violin.

Jihoon hums the movement’s tragedy with love, with longing, until a warm wetness drops onto his spine. Tears.

Daniel’s tears.

Fuck. _Fuck._

“I’m sorry,” Daniel says. He wipes his face with the back of his hand, and then words rush out of him like the aching in Jihoon’s voice. It’s Jihoon’s fault. Because music dances in his blood, a love passed to him from his mother, his grandmother, his great grandmother. He wasn’t careful. “That was beautiful. I normally don’t cry like this. I just started remembering my grandmother out of nowhere. She died a few years ago, but God, I loved her so fucking much. She was my everything. She’s the only reason I even survived high school—I don’t know why I’m telling you this, you don’t care—but I miss her.” A sob swallows his next sentence.

“I care,” Jihoon says. And means it despite everything. “Don’t apologize. You don’t have to apologize for crying. Tell me about her.”

He pulls Daniel’s shaking shoulders closer, lets him weep into his neck, and watches the dawn awaken onto his peach walls through the thin white sheet over his window. Dust shimmers in the awakening sunlight as if chasing away the enchantments of moon dust and the misery in a memory’s hummed melody. They remain like this even after Daniel stops crying, even as Daniel tells him about his grandmother—that the watch he wears was a gift from her, that he has her name tattooed on his wrist just so that the watch hides it from the prying eyes of high society, that he’s tired, so tired of living the way his parents want.

By the time they’re both finally falling asleep in each other’s arms, the neighborhood begins to awaken. Front doors opening. Car doors slamming. A baby screaming next door. The couple in the house stacked below theirs arguing.

“Thank you for listening to me,” Daniel whispers on his skin. His voice is husky with exhaustion. “I can’t remember the last time someone actually listened to _me_.”

Jihoon is about to thank him, too, for being honest and open in a world where the secrets you keep are what keep you alive, but then he hears keys just outside the door. One by one, the locks open with a click until the door’s hinges are whining and his uncle and aunt are stepping inside.

For a single moment, Jihoon’s entire world is motionless, noiseless.

“Out!” his uncle says, his voice a roar. He pulls a plastic handgun from the back of his stained jeans and aims, though Jihoon can’t tell if it pointed at him or Daniel. His first impulse is to move in front of Daniel so it didn’t matter, but he’s frozen. “Get the fuck out!”

Daniel dresses quickly, even quicker than he’d undressed Jihoon. With his head down and his jaw set, he leaves with eyes still watering and his fisted hands still trembling. Jihoon’s uncle’s gaze and gun follow him from the bedroom to the living room to the front door.

Jihoon moves to stand and follow Daniel out, make sure he finds his way to someplace safe, but his uncle’s shadow falls over him. He expects his uncle to ask where the fuck is his respect, bringing a stranger into his house. He expects a reminder that blind trust is exactly what killed his parents. He expects him to ask Jihoon to show him what he’s hiding under his hand.

Instead, he says, “Get yourself covered before Seongwoo gets home. Try pulling off shit like this again and I’ll make him my next target.”

He shoves his gun back into his pants and leaves. Jihoon catches a glimpse of his aunt’s horrified expression before she follows him. Their bedroom door slams shut.

Jihoon tugs on his pajamas, his eyes burning as he imagines his aunt closing her eyes, bowing her head, pressing her hands together in a prayer. He imagines his uncle wrapping his arms around her frail form, kissing her black hair, whispering false assurances into her skin as she asks God to forgive him. He settles into bed with Daniel’s grandmother’s watch under his pillow because there’s no fucking way in hell he’ll let Seongwoo pawn it.

He’ll protect this watch with his own worthless life until he can return it.

 

 

Six weeks until the audition, Jihoon is back in his filthy alley with his violin case open and his grandmother’s violin against his shoulder. This time, he sits in front of his case on the sweltering granite setts, score of Chaconne propped against its velvet insides because he hasn’t memorized it yet. He probably won’t for months still, but that’s fine.

All he has to do is play. All he needs to do is impress. All he needs to remember is this feeling in his chest, this desire to _succeed_ that presses in on him from every side. If he can make it into the orchestra, he can bring a steady paycheck back to his aunt and uncle. Maybe he can help them afford a bigger house and he can have his own room. Maybe his aunt can make more dresses, can make an actual business out of her threadwork.

Bow light and swift, he starts the piece with pleading two-stringed double stops in deep and imploring tones. Then he buries them within the texture of four-note chords slurred with a diminuendo and a delicate lightening of his bow. Top voice pleading in slurs and barriolage string crossings, softly first and then demanding and anguished and fevered.

 _Wistful_ , like memories of his mother throwing in whatever leftover vegetables they had into their ramyeon, teaching him Pachelbel’s Canon, singing him lullabies to fall asleep.

 _Yearning_ , like memories of his father playing football with him in the park, returning home with fresh fruit for dessert, calling him _son_.

This piece is Jihoon watching his parents bleed to death while begging them to _please, please don’t die_. It’s crawling over to their cold bodies and shaking them as though they were asleep, as though they’d slept over their alarms. It’s asking them to wake up. It’s the hours spent in quiet understanding that they’re gone and he’s alone, completely. It’s him holding his memories close, closer still, so close he welcomes them as sorrow’s warm embrace.

When the final double stop echoes in the alley, there is no applause. Just a little girl a few steps outside the alley with her head in her hands. Young and terrified and hurting, bruises blossoming red and purple down her forearms. Jihoon takes the girl into his arms and whispers assurances into her curly hair as he wishes someone had done for him, even if they’re all lies.

It will never be all right.

Nothing will ever be right again.

 

 

After lying to his aunt about helping Seongwoo with something, Jihoon finds his way through his neighborhood to where Daniel waits beside his sleek, vintage American car, exchanging thousands of dollars for a small polybag from a young boy. With a plastic gun tucked into his tattered jeans, the boy reminds him of Seongwoo when they were still kids, imitating his father’s gang conceit. When the boy leaves, Daniel waves the bag at Jihoon, and Jihoon’s fingers itch to steal it and throw it into some dirty corner Daniel wouldn’t dare to get within five meters.

“In case we get bored,” Daniel explains. A new ring glitters on his finger, but it doesn’t match his grandmother’s watch.

“Us?” Jihoon asks, ignoring the ring and what it might mean so he can let Daniel pull him into a comfortable hug that threatens to swallow him whole. He hates how he loves the way Daniel buries his face into the crook of his neck. “Get bored? Don’t fucking think so.”

Daniel gives him a quick kiss. “Are you ready?”

“You sure you want to take me to the theater looking this poor?” He runs a hand down the front of Daniel’s fitted, charcoal suit. He’s sweating in it, his face glistening in the summer sun, but he’s as handsome as ever with his brown-into-blonde hair slicked back. Jihoon’s wearing tight black jeans, scuffed dress shoes, a white dress shirt washed far too many times. “That’s fucking brave of you.”

“You look fucking amazing in everything you wear. I’ll take you anywhere you want.” Daniel reaches his hands Jihoon’s waist to rest his hands lower than his back. “I’ve got a suit in the car waiting for you though, if you want to change.”

“ _And_ you’re being thoughtful? You’re spoiling me, hyung.”

“I’m courting you. Is it working yet?” He grins. It’s painfully hopeful, painfully genuine.

“Maybe.” Jihoon kisses the beauty mark under his eye, fingers his jawline. With the way Daniel’s gaze doesn’t waver, he probably knows the real answer to his question. “Let’s go before traffic gets too bad.”

“I could think of things for us to do if it does.” His hands lower. His grin turns into a smirk.

“I don’t want to miss the performance, hyung.”

“I’m teasing.” Daniel kisses Jihoon’s cheek, then opens the door for him. “And I’ll get a show anyway when you change.”

Jihoon rolls his eyes as he slides into the passenger side. “Maybe I won’t change then.”

Daniel rounds the car and gets in behind the wheel with a pout. “I did say it’s if you wanted, I guess. But I was looking forward to it. I even got you one that matches mine so we can be that annoying couple who’s good-looking as fuck and also well-dressed as fuck. Please?”

How could he say no to that?

Jihoon takes Daniel’s wrist into his hand gently, lifts it to his lips so he can kiss the gold band of his grandmother’s watch right where it hides his secret tattoo. “You sure you got my size right?”

“Of course I did.” He reaches into the back to grab the sharp suit he picked out for him. It’s in plastic, on a hanger. It’s black with charcoal trim, a charcoal tie, charcoal dress shoes. There are gold cufflinks in one pocket. There’s a gold watch in the other.

He wants to tell Daniel it’s too much, but he doesn’t. Because it’s not. “Make sure to keep your eyes on the road. I don’t want to die today.”

“I’m good at multitasking.”

The car starts after Daniel secures his seatbelt, and then they’re off to the newly restored Seoul Arts Center. As Jihoon changes with nerves twisting in his stomach, Daniel chances fond gazes at him, lets a finger drift across his bare skin just before it’s covered again by crisp, clean, expensive new clothes. Maybe the nerves are because the theater holds so much significance for him and his mother, grandmother, great grandmother and maybe it won’t be nearly as wondrous, as marvelous as he imagined. Maybe it’s because he’s about to step into a world he can’t enter even in his dreams and what if he likes it too much, feels like a small trapped animal in his own life?

The car pulls into the entrance of a park garage, driving around and around deep underground until it stops at the bottom of the LED-lit and concrete-built atrium. Attendants open their doors simultaneously with a flourished bow. Daniel’s hand finds his hip, and he guides him to the elevator as a robotic arm lifts the car into an empty spot above.

In the elevator, Daniel taps his heavy gold watch against a display beside the closing doors. The cold air has a faint scent of orchids. An automated voice welcomes Daniel by name to the theater and reminds him about his balcony seats, which the voice explains are the best in the theater. After all, he is the only grandson of the chairman of the nation’s largest conglomerate.

Daniel swings an arm around Jihoon’s shoulder, presses his lips to his temple. “You okay?”

_No._

Jihoon turns his head, catches Daniel with a kiss instead. “Of course,” he says, but he doesn’t sound that convincing. “You better show me off properly, though.”

“I couldn’t dream of doing anything less, Park Jihoon.” He kisses him again as if his tongue can ease all of Jihoon’s worries, his fears.

Then the doors open to the cement foyer, the ceiling an image of frozen rain in shades of gold, and into the buzzing of high society chatter. The place is fucking beautiful. Jihoon fights his urge to shrink into Daniel as they weave through the perfumed crowd to a pair of escalators, each stair glowing with magenta brightness.

Daniel grabs two stemless glasses of expensive wine from a waiter on their way. Inside the Concert Hall, the floor is dark wood and the ceiling is coffered panels. They sit in white velvet chairs and suddenly Jihoon is done giving a shit about all the glitz and glamor. He leans into Daniel’s side and Daniel keeps an arm around his shoulders, runs his hand up and down Jihoon’s arm with a soothing touch. They make promises for the night in each other’s ears until the lights lower and the curtains are drawn back.

Following a single quiet moment, the pianist plays the first chord of three black keys on the sleek grand piano center stage. The singular sound of the notes vibrates in Jihoon’s ribcage. Two notes linger, then the fourth note joins just a little higher, the fifth a little higher still, the sixth rounding off the first measure of the first movement. An octave on the left hand. A triplet figuration on the right. Left repeating and repeating.

Jihoon closes his eyes and wades into the vastness of the sonata, each new note another step into its darkness. The rhythm laps against his skin until a wave rolls closer, right hand climbing higher, and crests over his head. He is under. The music blankets him until the final notes of the night fall into silence.

“What a smile,” Daniel whispers. He brushes some of Jihoon’s hair carefully. “How about I get you up on that stage? I want to hear you play up there. Come on.”

Without waiting, Daniel escorts him backstage. Just his name clears them through security. Daniel can fucking do anything.

Jihoon can’t tell how long they wait until the guests all make their way back to the lobby. Time feels like it stopped after the sonata ended. Or maybe after it’d begun.

Then Daniel guides him on stage to the piano standing in the shadow of the curtain, their audience a cleaning crew picking through the auditorium for garbage. He pulls out the bench for Jihoon, sis down next to him, uncovers the keys. His eyes are on fire, his fingertips trailing down his arm until their hands entwine. He brings one up, kisses his knuckles one by one.

“Play for me?” he asks in a whisper across the back of Jihoon’s hand. “You know _Sonata quasi una fantasia_ , don’t you? Your fingers—I watched them play along.” He places Jihoon’s fingers on the porcelain.

“I’m not any good,” Jihoon says, though his mother used to boast about how he’d learned how to play piano before he’d learned to count. That isn’t why he’s hesitating.

Daniel laughs, a trace of freedom’s raw sound glittering softly like his gold earrings, gold necklace, gold watch, gold rings molten fortune even in the dim light. “Of course you should. Why not? You can do any fucking thing you want. I’m right here. No one can do shit to you. You’ll be playing properly here soon enough anyway.”

What it’d be like to be that privileged.

He tells himself he’ll be careful, he’ll control himself, he won’t push any of his feelings into the song this time. His hands move on their own, poising to ghost just above the keys. With one, gentle stroke of his skin against the smooth porcelain, he plays the first chord and the sound curls deep within his chest. The notes consume him.

Closing his eyes, he tumbles into the sonata’s warm reverie, where only he and Daniel exist, naked souls dancing around each other as lovers. Their bodies close. Their shallow breaths becoming one. Their stolen glances. Their swollen lips. Their entwined fingers. Their sweaty skin sliding together. Their shared laughter a symphony of solace to his ears. Their thighs just barely touching on a cold bench on a famous stage all alone.

“Jihoon.” He sounds as though he’s in Jihoon’s dream with him.

His heart shudders, a flush crawls over his flesh.

He fucked up. He stops playing, his gaze drops to his hands where they lay motionless on the porcelain.

“Jihoon.” Daniel kisses his neck, his ear, his cheek, turns his head, kisses his forehead, his nose, his chin. “I like you. I like you a lot. I like you so fucking much that all I can think about is how I want to run away with you. Take you to America. Live together all alone, you playing all you want. We could leave tonight even, if you want. Wouldn’t that be amazing?”

Is this Daniel or is this Jihoon’s feelings running through him instead? But for a moment, he lets himself swim in Daniel’s imagination, can see the car ride to the airport, the airplane to Seattle or Los Angeles, an apartment with a piano like this in the corner of the living room and Daniel listening to him play from their messy bed.

It would be amazing, if only he knew it was actually what Daniel wanted.

“I can’t,” Jihoon says, and fuck does it hurt. He’s not sure if it’s because he’s saying no to himself or if it’s because he’s saying no to what probably aren’t even Daniel’s real feelings. He grounds himself in memories of his aunt and her fingers covered in band-aids, of his uncle and his concern hidden in hard scowls, of Seongwoo and his rare protectiveness. He continues, “My family relies on me. They’re all I have left. I can’t leave them. And we don’t have to run away to be together. We’re together now. Aren’t we?”

Silence follows. Jihoon can hear his heart hammering in his ears. He can hear his dry swallow. He wants to study Daniel’s face to maybe get a clue what he’s thinking, but a part of him is afraid to watch the thrall of his emotion-tinged music fade from his mind.

So he waits. Stares at the way their thighs are toughing still, just barely. Counts his breaths until they’re even, until he can imagine that he’s calm.

Then Daniel covers one of Jihoon’s hands. It shouldn’t mean that much, but there’s something about that one simple gesture that closes Jihoon’s throat.

“Please tell me you’ve fallen in love with me at least,” Daniel says, and it’s quiet and his voice quivers and it feels more heartfelt than it should. “Jihoon, you like me too, don’t you?”

He can’t stop himself from answering. “Yes.”

Daniel pulls out another gold ring from inside his suit jacket and slides it onto Jihoon’s finger. A promise. “My parents are forcing me to get engaged. I’m going to be married by winter. That’s why I want to run away. With you. I don’t want anyone except for you. But if I stay here, I don’t have a choice. I have no fucking choice at all. So this is a promise that if you want to be mine, I will never leave you. No matter what, I will always be yours. So please be mine.”

Jihoon answers Daniel with a kiss that ends with them moaning on the floor long after the lights are turned off.

 

 

A week later, Jihoon is on the stage again, this time alone under the spotlight. The conductor and a handful of other people who’re there to judge his talent and skill and potential ask him what he’ll be playing.

He sets his weathered score on the music stand and answers with his chin high. Then he plays. He forgets about the technicalities of Chaconne, the burden of attempting Bach’s masterpiece. His heart, dark and heavy, beats within the basso ostinato. His hopes reach with his left-hand chords in controlled vibrato. His grandmother’s violin weeps in that wide, open space.

They stop him barely half-way through.

They should be crying, but none of them are.

Fuck it all.

“We’ve heard enough,” Hwang Minhyun says with a soft smile that tells Jihoon absolutely nothing. “Thank you.”

He gives them a bow, packs up, and leaves. He walks all the way home, but even that isn’t enough. Leaving his violin behind, he loses himself in the slums until he finds himself in the middle of some party where the music is loud enough and the drugs are plentiful enough to engulf the way he breaks for the last time.

 

 

Jihoon has perfected his timing by autumn, and Daniel arrives five minutes after his aunt leaves to meet with the bride for a final fitting and his uncle and Seongwoo won’t be back home for at least two hours. Daniel greets him with a soft kiss in the corner of his lips. Then he hands him a score of music.

“What’s this for?” Jihoon asks, taking the sheets from him and glanced them over.

Daniel crosses the living room a few steps to the sliver of counter space beside the small gas stovetop and even smaller aluminum sink that reeks of sewer. The floral tile in the kitchen documents the end of the lives of the shanty house’s last residents in distracting brown stains.

As he considers the vivid yellow walls, the TV sitting on top of a broken plastic dresser, the groaning refrigerator, he says, “I have a favor to ask.”

“Yeah?” Jihoon takes a seat on the couch, lays the sheet music on the coffee table on top of a dozen of cigarette butts. He pats the spot next to him. “I’m assuming you want me to learn this?”

Daniel studies him from across the room, then he heads over with his head down. “I was hoping you could play it for my engagement party.”

Oh.

As Daniel sits, Jihoon picks up the score again. He has no words.

Daniel continues, “I thought I could keep pushing back the date, but my parents don’t care what I want anymore—as if they ever did. They just need to save face and since I’m their problem son, this will show everyone I’ve been tamed. It’s bullshit, but it’s my life.”

Daniel has everything Jihoon wants—all the shit he could ever ask for. Both parents. His own room. More money than he can spend in a lifetime. Clothes. Jewelry. Cars. Drugs. With just his name, he could get into any restaurant, any event. With a few phone calls, he could arrange a trip to Europe or the United States. None of this has kept Daniel from being married off like a possession.

Jihoon drops the score, climbs onto Daniel’s lap and straddles him, runs his hand down the roses inked down his arm until he has Daniel’s hand in his own.

“I know I’m a dick for asking,” Daniel says. When Jihoon raises his gaze, their eyes meet. He looks like he could cry. “But I don’t know anyone who can play as beautifully as you. I’ll pay you whatever you want. Or you don’t have to. I wouldn’t make you. You don’t even have to come. I’d understand.”

“Of course, I’ll play for you.” He leans down, kisses him. He starts pulling off his shirt.

“I’m sorry for asking,” Daniel says between kisses, “but I couldn’t imagine any of it without you. I love you. This won’t change anything. I promise.”

“I understand,” Jihoon says, but he might be lying. He starts unbuttoning Daniel’s pants, but he notices his sleeve has extended onto his chest. A new tattoo. Jihoon starts tracing it instead. It’s a music score, and Jihoon recognizes the notes. He presses his palm against it. “I love you, too.”

For a second, they’re too raw, too vulnerable in front of each other. Jihoon sees past the image Daniel tries to fool everyone with, that he’s some tatted up bad boy with suave pick-up lines waiting on his tongue for the right person, that he doesn’t give a single fuck, that he’s just sex, drugs, and money. And maybe, just maybe, Daniel’s seeing past the way Jihoon tries to pretend he’s in control, that he knows what he’s doing, that he’s not broken in a million ways and ready to be broken again anyway.

They kiss with an inhale, then they’re gasping for breath as they undress each other. Daniel’s pinning him down to the couch, moving his hips between his thighs. At first, it’s rough and Jihoon never though he could be that loud. Then Daniel is pressing his forehead to Jihoon’s chest and he’s slow, he’s delicate, he’s careful, and they’re not fucking anymore.

Afterwards, Jihoon holds him close for a long time. Too long. When Daniel closes the door behind himself, Seongwoo is standing in the doorway of their room. For a second, Jihoon sees in the faint frown on his brow the same worry with which his mother had sent him to school every morning. His mother and his cousin, they look alike—those ears, slightly protruding, and those knowing eyes, delicately captivating.

He doesn’t listen to half of what Seongwoo says, not until Seongwoo has him in his arms and he realizes he’s shaking. Not crying, but shivering, trembling, quaking.

“I’ll kill him,” Seongwoo says, and the threat lives like an inferno in his throat. “For you. Whatever you want. I’ll make this okay. I promise it’ll be okay. It’s all okay.”

 

 

Before now, Jihoon has never been dressed up, done up. He’s never been to a salon where they can make his hair feel so soft he’s not sure it’s even his own hair, and he’s definitely never been to an expensive boutique that sells clothes worth more money than his own life.

Daniel spends an hour deciding which pair of dress shoes Jihoon should wear, which watch, which cufflinks, which tie before he has to leave. After vacant-minded seamstresses have sewed and pinned him into a maroon suit that fits him in ways he never thought a suit could, a bodyguard directs him to an oversized black car, windows tinted, waiting roadside. The same bodyguard guides him down a red carpet where his picture is taken by over a dozen photographers for God knows what reason.

Then it’s inside a tall skyscraper, into an elevator with gilded mirrors and a chandelier, up to the top floor’s neon opulence where floor-to-ceiling windows reveal a smog-ridden city.

Jihoon has no idea when they party started, but Daniel is waiting for him just outside the elevator.

“Thank you for coming,” he whispers into his hair as he gives him a quick hug. He presses kisses into his hair. “Thank you for being here. You don’t have to stay unless you want to.”

Jihoon chuckles. “Let’s get this over with.”

Daniel gives him one more squeeze, then he puts a hand between his shoulder blades and ushers him to the middle of the banquet hall. The crowd quiets as they stop in front of the piano. A spotlight falls on them. Daniel introduces him by name. There’s applause. Jihoon bows, takes measured steps to the small stool and sits on its leather cushion.

His heartbeat is a panicked staccato. He poises his right foot in front of gold pedals. Fingertips move over the keys of a concert grand piano that looks like the one in the Seoul Arts Center. Notes a gentle fire under his fingertips, a faint caress against his skin, a soft hum in his veins. Hopeful, like when they first met in the music store. Left hand unbroken, eight-note sequence rolling over and over. Right hand moving with freedom until the final, definitive Picardy third. Peaceful. Complete. Applause.

Starting again, lightly, leaping. He takes a big breath of the melody, the legato and the rubato trilling together as two birds on one branch. Animated, passionate, wings open and flying, soaring to another bough. Affectionate, like the way they’d pressed their bodies together when they danced at Seongwoo’s birthday party, when they’d smiled together, laughed, hugged, kissed. How he’d held Daniel when he’d cried, reliving the loss of his grandmother. How they’d made love on the stage his great grandmother had once played. How Daniel had put that ring on his finger. Landing, gently, to laugh in messy chirps. Then quiet again. Applause.

Cautious, now, moderate quickness. Right hand a melody and counter melody. A hint of brightness with dark edges. _He never wanted you. He was always taken. He wanted someone—something—to hide in until he couldn’t run from reality anymore._ He’d loved the parts of Jihoon that hadn’t reminded him of this luxury life, of this allure, of this expectation to be what he thought he wasn’t but doesn't know how to be anything else. Loud contrast soft contrast. Left hand arpeggio, one two three four five six seven eight notes. Soft contrast louder still. Reach high at the end to accompany a wide chord with a high octave. Sweaty fingers, controlled, smoothing out the last calm note. This is the sound of breaking. This is the sound of goodbye forever.

Quiet.

Applause.

Eyes glisten. Hands cover mouths, cover faces, cover stomachs. Above, the cyan-stained glass chandeliers brighten, lifting the room out of its azure ambiance and into an aquamarine dream. Jihoon rises from the bench, bows once as sobs fill the room. Daniel, cheeks tear-stained, takes a step toward him but doesn’t follow him as he moves to the elevator. His soon-to-be-wife is on her knees at his side.

In the lobby, Seongwoo is waiting for him.

 

 

A few weeks later, there’s a knock on Jihoon’s door. It’s Hwang Minhyun with a bouquet of fresh roses and that soft smile of his.

“I wanted to be the first to congratulate you,” he says as Jihoon accepts them with a smile and a thank you, but Minhyun doesn’t know Jihoon found a card a few days earlier slipped between the screen door and its frame.

On a piece of paper within his wedding invitation, Daniel had written:

_Jihoon,_

_Thank you for playing for me_. _I shouldn’t have asked you to, and I’m sorry. For everything. I won’t ask you to play at my wedding, as much as I’d love it. As much as I love you. Because I love you._

_I talked to some people at the orchestra. I might have pulled a few strings, but hopefully that doesn’t matter. I know how important it is to you._

_You deserve it._

_Congratulations._

_Love,_

_Daniel._

 

 

 

∞

**Author's Note:**

> well that was a ride. here's my [twitter](http://twitter.com/slackeuse) and [cc](http://curiouscat.me/slackeuse) if you'd like to yell at me lol i also appreciate comments.


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